The voice continued speaking.
"Run you idiot, run!"
It took Harry a moment to realize that the voice was not, in fact, speaking to him. This was slightly better than he'd imagined, though it raised the question of who, exactly, they were talking to. It was a different voice from the other, shrieking one (Which Harry was beginning to form an impossible suspicion as to the nature of), but something about it seemed odd in the same way as the first. It tickled at a memory of Harry's, though when he couldn't say. Something about a zoo, or maybe an aquarium? Whatever the case, it was also coming from much closer to Harry, and not the direction of the enormous fight.
"Get away before they kill you!"
It was difficult for Harry to identify the gender of the voice. Confusingly so. It kept shifting back and forth, as though uncertain, or something. Male, female, something in between, switching from one word to the next or even partway through a word. Listening to it made Harry's head hurt. Or maybe that was from knocking his head against the ground when he fell, earlier. Then again, the shrieking, swearing voice of angry doom was pretty painful to listen to. At any rate, Harry felt it best to identify who this strange third party was, if for no other reason than because the ninja guards seemed to be completely ignoring the voice, in spite of how loud it was. More accurately, they didn't seem to notice. This disturbed Harry, given that his invisibility cloak had been insufficient against them. Admittedly, he had no way of knowing how they'd spotted him in the first place, so maybe there was a good reason for that. Even so, this person didn't seem concerned for the ninja. Or whatever these people were. Some of them dressed like the ninja he'd seen before, but most of the others... still, there were ninja in there. A few, at least.
"Nnnnggg. If you're not going to save yourself, at least kill the spiny one, you waste of flesh!"
Harry doubted, for example, that this particular line was referring to the snake. There was nothing about it that was spiny (unless you counted its fangs... one of which was missing, come to think of it), whereas one of its assailants was very spiny indeed. Then again, this was edging uncomfortably close to suggesting that this second voice was attempting to order the giant snake around. Harry found this laughably unlikely, or he would if he wasn't attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. Mind you, the snake seemed to be completely ignoring the voice, so maybe it was just a crazy person. Then again, their words indicated that this failure to comply was out of the ordinary. Whatever the case, it was all very disturbing, suggesting either that the person in question was a complete loon and therefore dangerously unpredictable, or normally perfectly capable of directing the snake successfully, which would indicate the person in question was behind the attacks and therefore predictably dangerous. Either way, they were on school grounds, which would itself indicate either that one of the students, faculty, or ninja guards was a dangerous and/or crazy person, or possibly that said dangerous and/or crazy person had infiltrated the school with great success. The former possibility was deeply disturbing for obvious reasons. The latter was even worse, in a way, given Harry's personal experience with the guards. If an invisibility cloak was insufficient to sneak past them, what sort of stealth genius would it take to get in?
"Damn it all. You better kill at least a dozen more before you die, you stupid thing. Farewell. Idiot."
Aaaaand now the crazy and/or dangerous person was apparently escaping. The ninja guards were still not noticing. They were also still flinging sharp metal things like crazy, with worse beyond that. The six-armed one had shot an arrow clean through the snake's body! Not that this had stopped the thing, mind you, but Harry doubted it's flesh was as fragile as, say, styrofoam. Given its thickness and likely toughness, this was alarmingly dangerous. Harry's first impulse was to get the attention of the guards, but this seemed like an extraordinarily bad idea. If they attacked first, asked questions later, Harry would probably not live to step two. This meant Harry could either find someone less likely to kill him instantly, such as a teacher, and then lead them back to the battle site and head off to follow the voice, or he could chase it himself. Option one was bad for two reasons. Firstly, Harry would almost certainly end up in enormously massive trouble and cause immense trouble for his House. This would be bad, obviously. Secondly, the person would probably be long gone by then, making the whole point moot.
So Harry started heading to where he'd last heard the voice from.
He did so very, very quickly, not wanting to be spotted and killed. Or given detention. Or worse. It was really too bad he didn't have his cloak on hand, but it wasn't like he could drag it around with him all the time. Or maybe he could?... something to consider, anyway. Fortunately, luck was with Harry, and nothing terrible befell him along the way, though the shrieking had grown well beyond shrill and angry all the way into completely unintelligible. Which meant it hurt even more to listen to, but Harry pressed onward with the thought that he was moving away from the area and would therefore not have to listen any longer. Unfortunately, luck promptly abandoned Harry when he found himself in front of an eight-way split in the path, leaving him to wonder how he had never seen such a thing in Hogwarts before. Was this like the moving staircases, or something? Whatever the case, being very aware of how every second exponentially increased the likelihood of the target escaping, he chose a passage at random and ran down it, hoping his poor abused muscles could hold out for a few more minutes.
Harry ran for quite a bit, taking turns at random and trying his best to hurry. It helped that his head seemed to clear as the shrieking faded from his hearing, but the burning in his legs was soon going to replace that for sheer level of misery. Plus he was fast growing certain that he'd chosen the wrong passage, or perhaps failed to correctly identify the voice's location in the first place. Honestly, why was he even doing this in the first place? Hadn't he been about to turn and run when this stupid voice caught his attention? What, was his curiosity stronger than his sanity? Stronger than his survival instinct? Or was it something worse, like some stupid desire to be a hero?
It was about then that Harry spotted a flash of a black robe, a student robe, turning down at the end of a hall to his right. While it was theoretically possible that it was another student that had slipped the guards during the evacuation, Harry doubted anyone else was brave enough (or stupid enough, perhaps) to have gone looking for trouble like he had. Plus, it was the first sign of anybody he'd seen thus far (Come to think of it, where were the ghosts?...), and he was perfectly fine with taking what he could, if it meant he might actually stop running soon. Plus, it kind of suspicious regardless. What possible reason could a student have for running about right now? It didn't occur to Harry that this logic could be applied to him, as well, which is perhaps just as well. He had enough problems as is, adding guilt or a difficult logic argument would be just ridiculous.
Next glance of the person was a bit better. They had red hair, curly. They were clutching something in their arms. Most telling of all, they suddenly started running quite quickly, mercilessly crushing Harry's fantasies of rest. Ignoring, as best as he could (Which, given his past with the Dursleys, was pretty darn good) the agonizing pain in his legs and lungs, he pushed himself even faster. This turned out to be a bad idea, and he slowed down to a pace his lungs could actually support. The good news was that the person was shorter than him, and therefore probably had shorter legs. Stride for stride, Harry should have the edge. This made him feel slightly better about not running flat-out. It was too bad he didn't know any magic for running faster or anything. Something like that would be nice. He decided to check if Hermione had heard of any such thing, the next time he saw her. Things had been turning spectacularly strange this year, what with the ninja guards, the giant snake, people being turned to stone, that sort of thing. Running faster seemed like a good thing to be able to do quickly and on short notice for all these things.
Quite inconveniently, Harry found himself finally unable to run. That this occurred right in front of a girl's bathroom struck him as some kind of cosmic joke on him. Though that might be the lightheadedness speaking. At any rate, he gasped and heaved and gulped air for several seconds. He also cursed the whole state of affairs. Harry did not like the idea that whoever this person had escaped him so thoroughly. He had only the slightest clue to their identity, and didn't even see what they'd been holding. He had no way of knowing if they were even the person speaking to the snake or someone completely unrelated. For all he knew, they could come waltzing past him right now, and he wouldn't even know it!
The bathroom door opened with a creak, and Harry jumped like a gunshot had gone off. It was with some relief that he realized that it was just someone coming out of the bathroom. A girl, with red hair, actually. That almost set alarm bells ringing, until he realized that it was Ron's younger sister, Ginny. This confused him for a moment, until he remembered Ron saying something about his sister going to Hogwarts for the first time this year. He obviously hadn't seen her because of... whatever was going on with the first-years. Harry wondered, briefly, why she seemed so nervous, especially when she noticed him (She eeped), but before that train of thought could go anywhere a great wailing erupted from the bathroom. This scared Harry enough for him to pull out his wand, but Ginny assured him that it was just Moaning Myrtle.
Of course, Harry had no clue who or what 'Moaning Myrtle' was, so Ginny had to explain the whole 'ghost girl haunting a toilet' thing to him. She seemed very nervous, finally hurried away, explaining that she needed to be in the 'kue-noy-chee' dorm before she got in trouble. Harry supposed that 'kue-noy-chee' was the name of this new House that all the first years occupied, and began limping his way back to the Gryffindor dorm.
Though, this whole thing was kind of odd. There were four Houses for the four founders. What was with the fifth House? Or was it not a House at all, in which case what was with the first years? Even if it was a House, why were all the first-years in it?...